English Chess Forum

In December (25th) I noted that three of seven congresses I had taken part in had not appeared in the list of events submitted to the ECF Grading team. Only one of these has appeared in the following three and a half weeks. One of those missing was fairly early in the season, end of September, whil...

Not having long enough to seal a move is a problem. Especially a match not starting on time on an overrunning junior club. There are exceptions of course on starts. I think ECF will have a problem in implementing a new grading system with instructing leagues on how they can play their games. Quite ...

The deadline for July (e.g.) is normally about 15th July. Leagues are normally finished in the middle of May, so a league grader has maybe 6 weeks to get the results in. I suspect there's a heavy element of graders working to a deadline, and if the deadline was tighter (as it is in January), they'd...

My spies tell me that they suspect the intention is to get everyone to submit data through the "official" process, presumably a bit like Chessresults.com. Assuming ECF just uses the FIDE system, they could just use Chessresults.com! If clubs (or anyone else) don't submit results like that, the resu...

It is clear to me that these changes are proposed entirely for the benefit of new players. if they play enough games against relevant opponents within a shorter period than six months then let them have a number to amuse them. But just as F grades are generally out-with most competition rules I sus...

I'm a bit shocked, Roger, that you think you are ahead of the curve on this one.

The idea of monthly grading has been around for quite a while and I'm surprised at the delay in the subject appearing on this forum. The intention was in the strategy paper presented at the recent Council meeting. There are more details in the November Board meeting draft minutes. I am a rule taker ...

Submissions can be resubmitted by graders and we would be prepared to alter results if instructed by suitable authority from the ECF arbiter heirarchy, although I've never seen this latter part happen. Brian Valentine Manager ECF grading So if a result needs to be changed after submission (nothing ...

What's the position with grading those games from July onwards? They are already in the FIDE system and published, so presumably no changes there unless the FIDE Ethics or Fair Play Commission rules to remove them. As far as the ECF are concerned, again the internal club results have already been s...

The Guernsey Organisers have opted out of submitting results for ECF grading, but I have been processing members elected submissions to Games Played Abroad this morning. In this situation it was not included in the ECF Grand Prix. As an open FIDE rated competition from one of the British Isles Feder...

It's a reversed Vienna, surely? It's 1.e4 e5 2.Nc3 Nf6 3.f4 d5 4.fxe5 Nxe4 5.d3 with colours reversed. Indeed, and so 6 Qh5+ was in fact already known to be very bad. The same error of 5...Qh4+ in the (real) Vienna featured in Andrew Hon v Paul van der Sterren, Lloyds Bank 1993, when one of our 190...

More Brexit-IAGOCOT from The Times again A minister compares the Conservative leader to a chess player with only a king left on the board, who is powerless but still hanging on. “She’s in a situation where every move she makes worsens the national predicament. We still basically have no agreed gove...

IM Jack Rudd wrote: ↑

Tue Oct 16, 2018 1:36 pm

The only thing I know about the numbers of various federations on the ECF grading list is that by far the most represented federation is {undefined}, followed by ENG.

The grading list accepts people of all nationalities. The Nation code is only added for those with a FIDE reference.

I can say with some certainty that the August list will indeed meet that September hurdle.

The download file should be available this evening in its usual place and I'm hopeful the full website update will be there tomorrow.

Sorry for the delay.

Brian Valentine
Manager of ECF Grading

Matt picks out a lot of the issues around this formula. I have reviewed this from time to time and my preferred data sets are 1. All players not identified as junior(in either list) on both lists and 2. Those listed as ENG not junior on both lists. A rule of thumb is that ECF grades are on average a...